Happy Anniversary! (Year Seventeen)

Dogasu's Backpack | Rants | Happy Anniversary! (Year Seventeen)

By Dogasu
Posted February 1st, 2017

I had a surprising revelation the other day.

This year, Dogasu’s Backpack celebrates 17 years on the Internet. Seventeen years is a long time, especially in Internet time, but it's not one of the "big" anniversaries, right?

Well, I made my first post to the website on January 31st, 2000. I was 17 years old at the time. I am now 34.

Which means that, from today onward, I will have been running my silly little Pocket Monsters website for literally half my life.

How in the world am I supposed to feel about that?

Part of me is, of course, beaming with pride. Through my website I’ve been able to learn a great deal about not just Pokémon but about Japan and the Japanese language in general. I’ve gotten to introduce fans from all over the world to the Japanese version of the TV series and have met many great people, both online and off, thanks entirely to Dogasu's Backpack. I've gotten to watch myself grow from an annoying kid who didn't really know what the hell he was talking about and who would spend entire news posts talking about Gundam Wing or Rurouni Kenshin for some reason to a more experienced, mature (at least I'd like to think so) person who actually knows what the hell he's talking about most of the time.

Of course when you spend half your life doing anything it feels a little weird. I mean, half your life? Is that even close to being OK? Shouldn't you have quit years ago and moved on with your life?

The thing is, I'm still enjoying working on this site so why not continue? I've said this before but I'll say it again; if the franchise were to come to a screeching halt tomorrow - no more video games, no more animation, no more manga, nothing - I would still have a good 20 years' worth of updates left in me. There are just so many things about the franchise that are still waiting to be discovered and I love doing the work needed to uncover them. Continuing to do something I like is absolutely fine.

Something else I like to do is make predictions about what I think the next year has in store for us in terms of Pocket Monsters. So what do I think 2017 has in store for us?

Video Games

I don’t think we’ll see any new main series games this year. There have been rumors of a Pocket Monsters Star coming out for the Nintendo Switch and an upscaled version of Sun & Moon would be fairly easy to do (I mean, this guy was able to do it, right?) but I still think that's more of a 2018 release than something we'll see this year.
I do, however, think we’ll see at least one spin-off game on the Switch. I wanna say Pokémon Scramble since that seems to be the series Nintendo likes to use to launch a new system but it could very well be something else.
Pokémon GO will get its Jouto update this year but I think that’s going to be it as far as huge updates go. Trading and/or battling might be implemented this year but I think Niantic is going to try to charge people for those features to offset the massive server load those features will undoubtedly cause. Maybe something like "only available for premium members!" or some nonsense like that. Fans will be pissed but Niantic will still make a bajillion dollars from it.

Animation

On April 1st, 2017 the Pocket Monsters TV series will celebrate its 20th anniversary. For the series’ 15th anniversary an HD remaster of the very first episode aired on the variety show Pokemon Smash, and while I don’t dare hope that Media Factory will do something as amazing as remaster the rest of Kanto I do think it’s reasonable to at least expect a DVD set released in Japan for the anniversary. Amazingly, Japan has never had a a full, complete release of the TV series before; all the country's ever gotten in the past are random episodes here and there. It's about time the series gets a proper release in its home country!
The Sun & Moon TV series is a bit harder to pin down. In the past I would usually say something like “Satoshi will gets badges XX through XX” but that kind of prediction doesn’t really apply to this series, does it? So instead, I will say that in 2017 we’ll see Satoshi leave the school on Melemele Island and actually start traveling around the Alola Region. I also expect Gladio, Guzma, and the Aether Foundation to make significant appearances before the year's up.
I won't go so far as to say that the 20th movie, I Choose You!, is definitely not going to be a retelling of the first couple of episodes, but I will at least say that I don't think it's going to be the start of some trilogy. Why in the world would I think that? Instead, I think whatever they end up doing this year will be a one-off thing and that next year we'll go right back to showcasing the legendary of the day.
CD-wise I think we'll get the regulars - Alola! and Pose, the opening / ending theme to I Choose You!, and a release of the movie's background music. I'll also go ahead and make the prediction that this will be the year we finally see a release of the background music for Best Wishes! and XY (&Z).

I don't have any manga predictions because unfortunately I've fallen way behind on the various series that were released in Japan on 2016. Maybe I'll be able to catch up in 2017?

Finally! I'd like to tease a big project that I'm planning to launch on April 1st for the show's 20th anniversary. It's something that visitors of this site have been requesting for years and so I know that when I post the first part on April 1st that a lot of people will be like "fucking finally!" I hope you enjoy that as well as all the other content I have coming in 2017!!